On their second album, Retrograde, the Friends of Dean Martinez concentrate on the gritty, rootsy aspects of their sound; there's less Santo & Johnny and more Doug Sahm this time around. There's still a little bit of kitsch to the music, yet the band has quite a lot of charm, which makes Retrograde as entertaining as The Shadow of Your Smile. ~ Thom Owens, All Music Guide

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The mystique surrounding the making of this record is enough to make one take the great music on it for granted. This Italian quartet initiated a courtship with Young God's Michael Gira by sending him bizarrely packaged CDRs with varying contents, thus enabling Gira to acquaint himself with the band's sound and range. For what purpose was unknown to him at the time. Following a series of these discs, Gira received a final package that included a round-trip flight to Italy and a sum of money -- ...   [ read more ]

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?After the sonic experiments of Jean Renoir and Rainfall, Delta Kiss represented something of a return to the terra firma of tightly constructed pop songs. Which is not to denounce it as a retrograde step in any way. Rather there's a newfound crispness and economy to the arrangements -- for the first time in the hands of long-term collaborator Danny Manners -- that perfectly complement some of Louis Philippe's most felicitous songs to date. Opener Like Any Other, which began life on Ivory Tower as a ske...   [ read more ]

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